The present invention is related to a computer aided image acquisition and diagnosis system, and more specifically to a computer aided image acquisition and diagnosis system for imaging an object to obtain a diagnosis image from the projection data.
For an imaging apparatus of tomographic image, X-ray CT (computed tomography) apparatus is known, which generates a tomographic image, based on the computation, by irradiating X-ray and detecting the X-ray transmitted through an object. An X-ray CT is capable of imaging a number of tomographic images at once, thanks to the speed-up and parallelization of a scanned range.
The tomographic images obtained from an X-ray CT or an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) apparatuses may be processed with the methods such as three dimensional (3D) rendering, Colonography, and 3D MIP (minimum intensity projection) to reconstruct a 3D image.
In the image processing, automation of image processing is actively in progress. For example, there is a computer aided image diagnosis system, in which, when a user selects a point that he or she recognizes to be abnormal, on a display unit, on a tomographic image obtained from the image acquisition apparatus, a predetermined algorithm in response processes the image area around the abnormal point to present the user. The computer aided image diagnosis system is also referred to as a CAD (computer aided diagnosis). There also is a system in development in which a point in the aorta is pointed by the user on a tomographic image, the system extracts automatically the blood vessels from the image and processes the image to generate a 3D image to be displayed on the display unit.
As a computer aided image acquisition and diagnosis system as have been described above, there is known a system which processes a predetermined effect on a tomographic image to generate a 3D image, thus generated 3D image is then subject to a process for determining and extracting the abnormal point for displaying on the display (see, patent reference 1).
The tomographic imaging using an image acquisition system and the image processing using the CAD is being performed on a single shared console. As a result, the user may image the object and immediately process the tomographic image thus obtained without moving to another place, or waiting for a while. As an example, the reconstruction of image is facilitated by sharing the hard disk drive unit for storing the projection data of the X-ray CT apparatus.
However, when imaging a number of tomographic images, it takes long from the imaging, extraction of the detection object, processing of tomographic images, to the reading and diagnosing the final image. When imaging a number of images or processing a complex effect on the images, there has been an inconvenience that the storage of images obtained and processed was not facilitated.    [Patent Reference] JP-A-2002-325761
As have been described above, along with the progress of imaging system and support system, there arises a problem in generating images useful in the diagnosis from the obtained tomographic images and in storing according to a classification rule.